Although Netscape didn't formally announce much in the way of new products
at its strategy briefing held this week in San Francisco, it did make sure
that the world's press heard what its products can and will do.

Interspersed with a relatively moderate amount of corporate hype, Netscape
presented a great deal of interesting information, which some people might
characterize as "factoids," but which nevertheless paints an interesting
picture of Internet business in the year 1998. Some highlights include:

E*trade, a completely new company set up to perform stock transactions
over the Internet, is second in market share only to Charles Schwab & Co.

Ford Motor Company is using Internet-based applications to cut its
vehicle delivery time from over 50 days to just 15, and it's looking to a
future in which traditional dealer networks might be bypassed in favor of
direct customer contact.

Intuit is turning Quicken from a lackluster retail software product
into a booming Internet-based service.

The irony here is that computers and the Internet, still lambasted by many
popular media for "depersonalizing society," are helping companies connect
more personally with their customers. Netscape sees this as a big
opportunity for itself and its customers--over 2,500 companies, including
ISPs, value-added networks, and Web developers--to create Web-based
applications that can scale to global levels.

This is why Netscape invested heavily in directory services (the company
claims its LDAP directory server is 260,000 times faster than its nearest
competitor), and this is why it's focusing on end-to-end commerce (not just
serving to validate credit cards).

This high potential for growth is also why Netscape's application and
enterprise servers are equipped with features such as link management, load
balancing, and automatic failure recovery (to a working server).

It's why Netscape's working with Sun Microsystems to provide a single point
of support for customers running its software on Sun hardware. And it's why
the company's providing tools to connect legacy applications to the Web.

Microsoft may own the desktop, but Netscape is looking to own the business
infrastructure.